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altivoIt's been a strange day. I didn't get a lot done, other than the usual chores. Yesterday's blog post got a lot of replies that needed more commentary, for one thing. Then I came in from feeding horses and sheep and found several messages in my Earthlink mail that had been somehow lost in the spam trap. It's a wonder they weren't deleted. Those went back a couple of months and needed replies at least out of politeness, though some of them made requests that had already expired by now. One was an invitation from Alex at Bad Dog Books urging me to set up an "authors central" page at Amazon.
Seems like overkill, since I have only one story that appears in one book on Amazon, but I was curious enough to go through the motions. Of course, it's a marketing tactic, and Amazon asks for a photo and a biographical statement, which ought to be no problem. Except... they ask that the photo show only a portrait of you, without friends, mates, or pets. I couldn't find one. I finally sent them one of myself with a dog. Heck, lots of authors appear on the backs of their books in a photo with their dog. Big name authors, like Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts, in fact. So we'll see what happens with that. Apparently there's still an activation process that involves them contacting Bad Dog Books to make sure I'm not an imposter. Heh. Who'd want to impersonate me?
Speaking of Amazon, most of you probably remember the fuss in July when they decided that they had improperly distributed some materials to Kindle owners for which they did not have the correct distribution rights. So they went and deleted those books from the Kindle devices of those who had bought them. Without asking first, without any advance warning... Well, the outcry was enough to force their CEO, Jeff Brazos, to issue an apology and offer to return the deleted items or credit the accounts of any user who was affected. Presumably Amazon has reached a settlement with the actual rights holder for George Orwell's novel 1984, which was one of the major items involved.
I find this particularly ironic given the facts of the case. I also find it frightening in light of the story I cited yesterday, about a prep school near Boston that is eliminating its paper library entirely in favor of online resources and a few Kindles and Sony readers. Given that the Kindle allows Amazon to delete users' content without warning or consent, the potential danger of using it for school library resources should be obvious. You are giving Amazon censorship rights over your students and faculty. Worse, we all know that computer security is tenuous at best. Suppose Amazon's control system is hacked or duplicated? Imagine an anti-evolutionist deleting all the copies of Darwin's works from all the Kindles in the world. Imagine a religious fanatic, of whatever stripe, deleting books with which he or she disagrees, in whatever subject area. This seems like a very, very bad precedent, Amazon.
I don't own a Kindle. I do own an Ebookwise reader, and I like it very much. It is smaller and lighter than the Kindle, closer to the size and weight of a mass market paperback. The screen is backlit, unlike the Kindle. It offers a huge selection of materials at lower prices than the average Kindle items I've seen listed. And it lets me load my own materials, or books from Project Gutenberg, at will. As far as I can tell, Ebookwise has no ability to censor or delete files from my device. Since it uses a removable SMC memory module, I have a backup copy of everything that's in it anyway. I can transfer files between the Ebookwise and my PC, or make a duplicate of the SMC in the Ebookwise and store it somewhere as a backup.
Neither of these devices is suitable as a substitute for printed library books, though. Both of them lock most of their titles to a single device, and do not allow them to be shared among multiple readers. A library cannot maintain a list of Kindle books, for example, and load them at will to the reading devices of individual users, nor can they transfer books from one Kindle to another (at least, not the last time I heard the details.)
I don't deny that a digital revolution is going to come and shake the foundations of publishing as we know it. I do, however, deny that the revolution is already here. The Kindle is not the revolution, or even a harbinger of revolution.
Seems like overkill, since I have only one story that appears in one book on Amazon, but I was curious enough to go through the motions. Of course, it's a marketing tactic, and Amazon asks for a photo and a biographical statement, which ought to be no problem. Except... they ask that the photo show only a portrait of you, without friends, mates, or pets. I couldn't find one. I finally sent them one of myself with a dog. Heck, lots of authors appear on the backs of their books in a photo with their dog. Big name authors, like Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts, in fact. So we'll see what happens with that. Apparently there's still an activation process that involves them contacting Bad Dog Books to make sure I'm not an imposter. Heh. Who'd want to impersonate me?
Speaking of Amazon, most of you probably remember the fuss in July when they decided that they had improperly distributed some materials to Kindle owners for which they did not have the correct distribution rights. So they went and deleted those books from the Kindle devices of those who had bought them. Without asking first, without any advance warning... Well, the outcry was enough to force their CEO, Jeff Brazos, to issue an apology and offer to return the deleted items or credit the accounts of any user who was affected. Presumably Amazon has reached a settlement with the actual rights holder for George Orwell's novel 1984, which was one of the major items involved.
I find this particularly ironic given the facts of the case. I also find it frightening in light of the story I cited yesterday, about a prep school near Boston that is eliminating its paper library entirely in favor of online resources and a few Kindles and Sony readers. Given that the Kindle allows Amazon to delete users' content without warning or consent, the potential danger of using it for school library resources should be obvious. You are giving Amazon censorship rights over your students and faculty. Worse, we all know that computer security is tenuous at best. Suppose Amazon's control system is hacked or duplicated? Imagine an anti-evolutionist deleting all the copies of Darwin's works from all the Kindles in the world. Imagine a religious fanatic, of whatever stripe, deleting books with which he or she disagrees, in whatever subject area. This seems like a very, very bad precedent, Amazon.
I don't own a Kindle. I do own an Ebookwise reader, and I like it very much. It is smaller and lighter than the Kindle, closer to the size and weight of a mass market paperback. The screen is backlit, unlike the Kindle. It offers a huge selection of materials at lower prices than the average Kindle items I've seen listed. And it lets me load my own materials, or books from Project Gutenberg, at will. As far as I can tell, Ebookwise has no ability to censor or delete files from my device. Since it uses a removable SMC memory module, I have a backup copy of everything that's in it anyway. I can transfer files between the Ebookwise and my PC, or make a duplicate of the SMC in the Ebookwise and store it somewhere as a backup.
Neither of these devices is suitable as a substitute for printed library books, though. Both of them lock most of their titles to a single device, and do not allow them to be shared among multiple readers. A library cannot maintain a list of Kindle books, for example, and load them at will to the reading devices of individual users, nor can they transfer books from one Kindle to another (at least, not the last time I heard the details.)
I don't deny that a digital revolution is going to come and shake the foundations of publishing as we know it. I do, however, deny that the revolution is already here. The Kindle is not the revolution, or even a harbinger of revolution.
